Organizing campesinos

An example of a well-organized group of farmers

Paola, Marvin, y Nathaniel helping to plant the potato investagation.

Machismo is a term to describe the Latino culture of patriarchal societies. Women are meant to be in the kitchen, looking after the kids, and doing whatever their husband asks them without raising their voice.

The only problem is, Latina women tend to be a bit too feisty for this role, and as education slowly permeates the lower classes of América Latina, machismo is beginning to lose some of its validity.

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It´s a Wednesday after noon, and the mountain air has turned frigid as the clock strikes three: it´s time for the daily downpour. We´ve only just arrived at Gladis´s house, a small mud hut along the road to San Cristóbal, a tiny town in a high, mountain valley about 50 minutes away from San Isidro.

Paola and I, one of the directors of the NGO, sit outside the hut, inhaling the wood smoke from the fagón where Gladis has frijoles and arroz boiling away. The rain comes slowly, but soon we´re all inside the kitchen, an 8 foot by 10 foot room of earthen walls and earthen floors, an earthen stove with wood crackling away, two benches along opposite walls, and a tin roof that´s leaking in about twelve different places.

Gabriel, Gladis´s 18 month old, is shivering almost as much as I am, but he´s more accustomed than I am to being cold all the time. His mother is a 20-year-old with a beautiful smile and too many crows´ feet for her age. Her five year old daughter Jocyln hides under the bench, smiling up at me every few minutes to see if I´ll give her the awaited smile in return.

Finally, one hour after the meeting was supposed to commence, about six men come in from the rain, sopping wet and looking begrudged for having to come at all. ¨We´ve been waiting here for one hour.¨ Paola said. ¨We would be half way through the meeting right now if you had come on time.¨ I look at her with astonishment in my eyes. She´s a relatively young woman, married, with no children, and a college-educated career. She´s already going against many local norms without having to be so blunt with a group of proud campesinos. The glass ceiling is breaking.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss organized activities in a group of campesinos from San Cristóbal. What kind of investigations can they begin that will help them diversify their harvest, their nutrition, their profit? What kind of personal finance lessons would they like Paola to teach them in the coming months? What kind of debt does the group have as a whole? Are they still using chemical fertilizers, and why?

The group has already planted an investigative cultivation of potatoes, and the next step is to clean the field again and fumigate. Otherwise, the potatoes will die and all their investments and work will have been for naught. But no one wants to go clean or fumigate.

¨If you had a girlfriend, would you leave her for two months without calling and expect to come back and see the relationship flourishing?¨Paola asks, appealing to their machismo sides.

No, the men respond in unison.

¨Well, potatoes need the same love as girlfriends. You can´t just abandon them and expect everything to be okay. And if you don´t do your part, you´re not going to reap the rewards of everyone else. They´ll have more potatoes for dinner, more money, knowledge about how to grow better and more potatoes, and you won´t.¨ The men nod their heads, but some look disgruntled and unconvinced. Why is this woman telling us what to do? Some seem to be thinking.

Paola continues unabashed. ¨I don´t care if it´s part of our culture to be late, or to be poor, or to be lazy. Those are the bad parts of our culture, and we can change them. Your first responsibility, forget the potatoes, is to be on time for meetings. I don´t care what you´re doing at 3 o´clock, you made a commitment to be here, and we´ve all been waiting and we could be doing better things with our time. And it´s not an excuse to say ¨I´m poor and nothing´s gonna change cause I´m poor.¨

¨We´re not poor. We have land. Land makes us rich. You can do more with your land than just plant beans and corn. You can plant more and give your kids a better diet, sell more and buy your kids better clothes. But if you don´t come to these meetings, and if you don´t go fumigate those potatoes, you´re losing an opportunity to make your land rich.¨

Three men signed up to clean and fumigate the fields.

Hopefully, Gabriel and Jocyln will be eating potatoes soon.